CITC Award Winners

This summer, MACDC announced the Community Investment Tax Credit Awards to celebrate the collective power of community leaders, community developers, and our partners to leverage and to build thriving communities. The awards were presented to three organizations at MACDC's 2018 Convention on Saturday, October 20th. The submission criteria was a 2-3 minute video that highlights a successful program/project that was launched, or expanded with CITC funding.

CITC funds have fueled ACDC's expansion of our placemaking and youth programs by generating more unrestricted funds that allowed us to build out our staff capacity to serve more youth and families. In addition to growing our team, ACDC has been able to expand regionally into Malden and acquire an office space next to the local high school.

ACDC's youth and placemaking program is building a pipeline of leaders and creates real opportunities for young people to work with their neighbors, elected officials and government offices to make tangible, positive changes in their community. Our staff are essential to building relationships within the communities we serve, and we are excited to grow our team to empower and engage even more community members.

The Community Investment Tax Credit Program has been an instrumental for NewVue's ability to bring valuable resources into our communities, for projects like the Fitchburg Arts Community with support from concept to fruition. CITC funding is a critical ingredient that allows the Agency to create healthy neighborhoods where residents choose to live, work and invest.

As a part of the agency's Community Impact Plan, NewVue is committed to leading and innovating in the housing realm. CITC funding has allowed the agency to explore artist housing and complete necessary pre-development work that is difficult to find funding resources for. This was especially critical when the B.F. Brown School, one of three buildings that NewVue had been working for years with the City to repurpose into the Fitchburg Arts Community, was threatened when a four alarm fire blazed through the halls of the building, burning off the roof. NewVue had to act quickly with our project team to ensure that the project was still viable despite the damage and furthermore that the City would work with NewVue to replace the roof. We feared that this crisis would derail a cornerstone project that would help revitalize one of the poorest neighborhoods in North Central Massachusetts.

Because of the resources that the Community Investment Tax Credit has brought to the agency we were able to turn crisis into opportunity as the Fitchburg Arts Community rises from the ashes.

RCDC’s ability to offer Community Investment Tax Credits (CITC) from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to donors greatly enhanced our funding possibilities. Baystate Health recognized the rare intersection of an excellent housing repair project for asthma sufferers and receiving tax credits through CITC. Funding of $250,000 from Baystate Health for “Revitalize Healthy Homes” enabled us to build internal and external capacity with trainings, certifications and licenses that extended its work from making homes safe and energy-efficient to direct involvement in the asthma health of the people we serve.

As a community development corporation focused on ‘bricks and mortar,’ we saw housing repair and renovation as a safety and neighborhood revitalization issue. Through Revitalize Healthy Homes, RCDC now understands the effect of substandard housing stock as a social determinant of the health of residents. Recently, Springfield was designated as the #1 city in the nation whose population is at great risk for asthma; its aging housing stock was 90% built before 1980 and 70% before 1940. RCDC and Baystate Health’s collaboration is cutting-edge work using CITC partnerships to improve residents’ health and reduce health-care costs.

Baystate Health’s funding of the Revitalize Healthy Homes project set the stage for participation in an innovative social investment model - “Pay for Success.” This model has possibilities for sustainable funding support for remediating asthma triggers while reducing related healthcare costs. RCDC’s partnership with Baystate Hospital through CITC has provided an elevated profile at the state government levels, providing us with the opportunity to be included into healthcare and other systems of which we were previously unaware. This resulted in Revitalize CDC being notified that we recently awarded funds for the first time, from the state through a line item in the approved Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ FY19 budget.